1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a method for initiating a display chip of a computer system and, in particular, to a method for initiating a display chip while saving the storage space of the BIOS of the computer system.
2. Related Art
Along with the progressing manufacturing technologies of electronic devices, various kinds of computer systems have become popular among the public. Aside from the well-known personal computers (PC), other portable devices with devoted functions, such as MP3 players, digital cameras, mobile phones, and personal digital assistants (PDA), can also be considered as special kinds of computer systems.
There must be multiple input and output units for any kind of computer system for the user to operate and output results generated by it. Among all kinds of output units, the display unit for displaying images and text is the most important one. Therefore, most electronic devices are equipped with display units.
A computer system always has a basic input/output system (BIOS) for controlling various input and output units. When the computer system is turned on, the BIOS initiates the input and output units for the user to use. The display unit is one of those to be initiated by the BIOS. If the display unit does not operate normally, the user will not be able to know the status of the computer system.
Take an ordinary PC for example. FIG. 1 shows a schematic view of the BIOS 100 in a PC. The BIOS 100 can be divided into a system BIOS 102 and a boot BIOS 104. The system BIOS 102 is capable of initiating sufficient the input and output units of the computer system, so that the computer system can perform the necessary functions to boot to operating system. It also includes the initiating program 106a for initiating the display chip. After the display chip is initiated, the display unit of the computer system then can function normally. Therefore, when a normal start-up situation, the entire computer system is initiated by the BIOS 102.
Currently, the system BIOS 102 in the PC can be updated by the user in order to increase the capability of input and output units. However, this greatly increases the risk of the system BIOS 102 being damaged. Therefore, the PC first checks the system BIOS 102 once it is turned on. Whether the system BIOS 102 is damaged or not, the system BIOS 102 is checked by comparing with a check sum 108. If the system BIOS 102 is damaged, the PC should be initiated using the boot BIOS 104.
The existence of the boot BIOS 104 is to allow the user to restore or update the system BIOS 102 when the system BIOS 102 is damaged. Therefore, the user cannot write into that region. Consequently, that region is less likely to be damaged. Since its space requirement is far less than system BIOS 102, it only initiate necessary components for restoring or updating the system BIOS 102 in the PC. It includes programs such as the initiating display chip program 106b (which may be the same as the initiating display chip program 106a in the system BIOS 102) and the initiating optical disk drive program 110.
As the variety of input and output units in the PC increases, more initiating programs (e.g., the USB initiating program) are included in the boot BIOS 104. Therefore, the space of the boot BIOS 104 becomes insufficient. If the initiating display chip program 106b, which occupies a large amount of space in the boot BIOS 104, can be offloaded, the capacity of boot BIOS 104 will increase. In this case, a new method for initiating the display chip is required, so that it can be initiated when the system BIOS 102 is damaged.